The disclosures herein relate generally to information handling systems (IHSs), and more specifically, to IHSs that include lock tracing capability for software performance analysis.
Optimizing software application program performance on modern information handling systems (IHSs) is often a complex process. This optimization of application programs frequently requires extensive testing. One useful test includes software lock tracing of processes or threads of a processor in a multi-processor design, such as a symmetric multi-processor (SMP) information handling system (IHS). System administrators, software programmers or other users may desire evaluation of software locks that occur when multiple processes require access to particular data or a particular memory address pointer. During a software lock, users may desire performance information about a lock that requires the expenditure of significant system resources. During a software lock, users may run a lock tracing program to capture system information that may assist users in understanding the software lock in greater detail.
One method that system administrators, software programmers, users, or other entities use for software lock tracing includes manually initiating a lock tracing program at a particular point during the execution of an application program on a particular processor system, such as a symmetric multi-processor (SMP) IHS. The lock tracing program may provide users with information such as those memory address pointers that an SMP IHS locks during execution of processes or threads. The lock tracing program may also determine the duration of time that the lock is in place, how many times the lock occurs during a given period of time and many other lock tracing parameters. In this manner, users may evaluate the lock tracing software information in a desire to improve the performance of the execution of an application program. In an SMP system, SMP lock traces provide users with details of performance problems that a particular application program encounters during execution within an SMP IHS. Software lock tracing may consume substantial resources, such as operating system (OS) software resources of the SMP IHS during application program execution.